How
to Batch Auto-Rename using Photoshop 7+

There are a number of additional utilities that you used to
have to rely upon to handle this seemingly simple task. But with the advent
of Photoshop 7, this feature is built-in to the file browser feature. The
simplest way to accomplish this task is to start with all the images you want
to rename in a single folder.

Auto-renaming
using Adobe Photoshop 7's file browser

1. Select the images you want to rename from a folder. You can
select several consecutive images by holding down the Shift key and
clicking on the first and the last image of the series you want selected.
To choose single images that are not consecutive, use the Command/Control
key and single click on each image you want. To select all images in a given
folder simply use Command/Control + A (select all) or don't do anything
at all (provided you have the selection set to "Rename in Same Folder").

2. Use the File Browsers "fly-out"
menu (found in the upper right corner under the tiny black triangle on a mac,
and next to the button you originally clicked to open the file browser on
the windows platform). Click and hold and a menu will appear. Choose "Batch
Rename" from the menu.

3. There are several choices that need to be made in the "Batch
Rename" dialog box. If you click on the pop-up menu at the right
end of each field, you'll see the full range of choices (document name, serial
numbers, letters, date, extensions). There are six fields provided, and they
go in order, reading fashion (left to right, top to bottom).

4. For an example, lets say we wish to label several images
that we want to place within the "Animal" section
of our image database. If so, we could choose "document name"
for the first field (upper left), and type in "an011"
(the eleventh page of 20 slides per page in the physical animal file).

5. To auto sequence the numbers we choose "2 digit
serial number" for the second field (upper right) though we want
to pick up where we left off, so rather than accept the number PS gives us,
we want to specify where to start.

6. Type in the "#" symbol (above
the numeral 3), the value of the number where you want to start counting,
(05 for our example) and then another "#" sign. As you type the
second "#" sign you will see a change in the top left of the example
area of the Batch Rename dialog box, showing you the number from which you
will start counting.

7. The third field (in our example) or last field should be
used to add the standard file extension for the files we are working with.
In this case it's TIF for Tagged Image Format files. Do note that this area
does not update in the example field, it always just says ".gif"
(but don't worry, your files will be renamed using the extension you have
chosen).